


long dark before dawn

by oftachancer



Series: here in this moment [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Branching narrative, Coming Out, M/M, Multi, Multiverse, POV Dorian Pavus, Pagan Festivals, Past Relationship(s), Polyamory, Psychotropic Drugs, Time Travel, Trip-Sitting, non-linear time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:15:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 18,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21679621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oftachancer/pseuds/oftachancer
Summary: Aran Trevelyan - the seventh scion of Ostwick's Bann Trevelyan - had led a sheltered life at the Starkhaven Chantry as a historian and archivist's assistant. He's survived possession by a demon and having a piece of the Fade permanently stuck in his palm, the destruction of Haven, the beginnings of the Inquisition, and a ragged decade-long journey through time and space.Although a time-torn Aran lies dying, weary and ancient from his travels far afield, the Inquisition cannot rest. There are still wars and allies to be won, and Skyhold is open to all who might be of aid for the three dark days and nights before the Dawning Day. Unexpected guests, secrets, and revelations ensue.
Relationships: Cole/Dorian Pavus/Male Trevelyan, Cole/Male Inquisitor, Male Inquisitor/Dorian Pavus
Series: here in this moment [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1162070
Comments: 16
Kudos: 3





	1. To Valiant Hearts

The sound of Sera’s laughter speared the darkness. I glanced up towards the battlements to see a flash of movement - patchwork and corn silk by torchlight. She was running backwards, holding a pair of bottles aloft, and I stifled a too dramatic sigh over a memory of Aran doing much the same thing. Taunting me. Enticing me. Drawing me out into the privacy of night.

Probably Hawke, I thought, turning to watch the stars. The two women had been flirting horrendously. Horrendously, because Aran’s bow-wielding friend seemed to think that pranking everyone around her was the way to bond with new friends and more friendly interests... and the Champion of Kirkwall’s dark, frankly distrustful outlook on the world at large had begun to make those pranks decidedly... eerie. The Maker could only understand _why_ the two of them were putting the rest of us through this _;_ they should have been polar opposites. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t for me to understand. They seemed to be enjoying themselves. I couldn’t begrudge them that.

Behind me, in Skyhold’s main hall, the music was swift - fiddles driving the courtiers into forced hopefulness. There were hundreds of them from every corner of Thedas spilling out into the courtyard and the gardens and the training grounds. Some even went so far as to mingle with the common rabble packing the tavern. The air was pungent with the scent of rich meats, pastries, sweat, and cloying perfume. 

Meanwhile, in the light of mundane candles and torches, in a laboratory in the lower reaches of Skyhold where once there had been dungeons, Aran was dying. I should have been there, at his side, holding his hand as I’d promised. I should have been, but I wasn’t. No. Instead, I was wearing a frankly ridiculous costume and playing the Great and Terrible Game for the sake of the Inquisition. Staying one step ahead. Circulating. Rumor and braggarts would do the work for us. 

“My dear lord Pavus,” an Orlesian lilt cooed from the swirling lights behind me, “we are so pleased to find you. Your Inquisition’s Skyhold is quite the destination this evening.”

I summoned my charming smile and turned to the masked woman with a small tilt of my head, “Lady Montilyet will be overcome by your compliments, Dame Marsesson.”

“We had hoped to find the Herald at your side, my lord. We were so curious to see if it was possible that the Free Marches had been refined, at least somewhat.”

Rumors. Innuendos. I’d been sidestepping them for days now. “Alas, my lady, you just missed him. I believe he was heading to the gardens for his evening Chant. Perhaps you might find him there.”

“How very pious,” she sighed over our romanticized hero. Ancient, now. Leaving me. _I love you_ , he’d told me as he faded from my sight, _I love you_. “And you? You do not take the Chant?”

“My Northern sensibilities being what they are, I Chant at sunrise, to honor her return.” _I haven’t spoken the Chant in weeks. Perhaps I should. Perhaps that would help. As if anything could._

“Of course, of course! How forgetful of me! You must forgive me!” 

“If I must, then I shall,” I offered her a bow that made her giggle incessantly. I decided that I’d had enough of giggling. I did not need any more in my life.

“I must seek out Andraste’s chosen, but I will return to seek your company anon, if you will.” She flicked her fan, “Adieu, until we meet again, my lord.”

 _I would sooner swallow glass._ “My lady.” I bowed again to see her off, then turned back to the night sky. 

Time to move on again. I made my way down the steps. Another hour of this. One more. I didn’t care if Josephine set my hair on fire as she’d threatened; I was going back to Aran. Perhaps he would wake up long enough to admire the carefully crafted ensemble. I could imagine easily the look in his eyes caressing my skin, enumerating my bared musculature in that way of his. His glinting gaze warming as it roamed over my chest and arms, flicking past the priceless Imperial deep azure silk with its golden embroidery making it wink like stars in the night, the cape flowing endlessly around me from where it braced with a pivot of Orlesian cloth of gold at my neck. The lower robe strung low on my hips, seamed with yet more cloth of gold. Bracers and thonged sandals in the Tevinter theme. Oh, Aran might weep. If he could see me. If he could stay awake long enough. 

And Maker, here I was fantasizing about just being looked at. Admired by a ninety-something year old victim of war and magic and torture who would probably not last the week. Well, the least I could do was give the man who had taught me how to use my heart a bit of light entertainment in his last days. Remember what had been. Think of what might have been. If only. If only...

Laughter and merriment. Music and song. People everywhere I looked. A shadow flew past me through the crowd of overdressed courtiers, then skidded to a stop and fled back to my side. 

“Have you seen him?” A rushed whisper, panicked.

“Who?”

“The- _you know_.” Scout Harding lifted her brows meaningfully. “We had him, but he slipped us in the tavern.”

My heart skidded and skipped. “ _Him_ -him?”

“Who do you think? Slippery bastard.” She frowned, “If you find him, just… hold onto him. Or try to. Good luck.” She ducked under my elbow and ran towards the Main Hall.

A wild roll of lopsided, familiar cackling alongside a pearl of giggles. Thank the Maker for giggles. I looked up, my treacherous heart in my throat. Gold and white heads bobbed atop the roof of the Eastern tower. I swallowed past a sudden sluggish hammering in my head and hurried ahead, making excuses as I moved through the crowd, into the tavern and up the stairs. 

“You heard?” the Iron Bull assessed unhelpfully, slipping in behind me as I took the next level of stairs. 

“How long?”

“Not totally clear on that. People have been ‘seeing’ him since the casks were opened; if he really is back, that plan is biting us in the ass.” 

“Maybe not.” We stopped on the battlements, scanning the now empty rooftop. 

“...Shit.”

I glanced at the Iron Bull, then followed his gaze to the left and down. There, in the shadows between the two towers, two idiot rogues were doing handstands on the ledge of the battlements. “Aran,” I whispered; I didn’t mean to. My voice sounded tied away, raw and shattered.

The distant outline of Aran wobbled and tipped, spilling backwards onto the battlements in an inelegant roll. Unsteadily, he clambered to his feet, chasing a bottle as it rolled away from him and leaving Sera to stumble after him. She tripped, grabbing his back, and they both burst into laughter again, turning their unsteady gait into an oddly gallant dance across the stones.

“At least they’re having fun,” Bull grinned, clapping me on the shoulder. “Don’t look so glum, Dorian. Play your cards right, I’m sure he’ll save a dance for you, too.” 

Before I could stop him, the qunari took off at a jog, crossing through the tower’s gate house and rounding towards the rogues with a wave. “Don’t you remember what happened the last time you surprised him, you great oaf?” I cursed under my breath, chasing after him, already weaving a ward to protect them from each other.

“Bull!” A raw shout followed by running boots. I watched in horror as Aran launched into the air, crashing into the qunari before I could position myself to cast… and… kissed him? His arms and legs clamped around the qunari’s immense form in the joyful mirror of his attack in the thaig.

Sera fell backwards onto her butt, laughing and hiccuping, “You should see your faces! Priceless!”

In the torchlight, Aran was ruddy-cheeked, flushed with joy and, quite probably, at least a bottle of wine. “You’re alive!” He grinned, sliding his hands up over Bull’s cheeks and jaw to caress his horns. “You’re a living person with blood in the right places! Good job, you!”

“You’re soused,” Bull laughed.

“So very, yes, very- Dorian!” he breathed, eyes shining. He scrambled down, managing a pair of steps before dropping to his knees with a beatific smile. And there was the very look I had imagined. Wide ephemeral eyes, parting lips, head tilting as his gaze touched me like fingertips. “This is the best dream I’ve ever had,” he hiccuped, “the very best. You’re alive, and I’m alive, and Sera’s alive, and Bull’s alive, and Krem’s alive, and I saw Lace and Dalish and Cabot! Cabot pointed us to a keg in the back and told us to be quiet!” He snorted, joy pouring out of his throat like a fountain, his smile sliding sideways, “He didn’t think we knew about the storage hatch, but we did!”

“We did!” Sera echoed gleefully.

I took Aran’s outstretched hands - _Ah, his hands_! - and braced myself as the Herald of Andraste drunkenly catapulted into me, burying his scruffy face against my hip. 

“Missed you,” he mumbled, his breath hot through the thin silk. His lips traveling to the waist of the lower robes and up to my skin, caressing my abdomen.

“Yes-” I sank my fingers into his hair, combing the stark white strands. Matted with sweat. Familiar. He smelled like fire. “Thank the Maker you’re home.” I sighed as Aran wrapped his arms around my center, his hands sliding over my hips and up my back beneath the cloak. “Aran-“

“You’re alive,” he breathed deep, kissing my abdomen as he raked his fingers down my bare back. He pressed his face into my stomach, mouthing over my flesh, gripping my arse with strong hands. “Merciful gods, I like these robes. They’re so soft.”

“Yes, well, it’s a party.” My breath hitched, heedless of everything but his face, his hands, his breath. Aran. My Aran. Home again. Not gone. Not gone forever.

“You’re right,” he lifted his face to grin. “You’re fucking right!” To my great horror, he tottered back onto his heels and over to the ledge again, peeling his gray tunic off in shower of ash as he leaned out to scream across the chasm, “Damn Eamonn Cadash to the fifth hall of Arlathan!”

“Yeah! Damn Eamonn Cadash!!” Sera shouted after him, saluting their echoes with her bottle. 

“Getting ourselves an audience now,” Bull cleared his throat meaningfully. “Let’s take the party inside, all right?”

The Aran who turned back to us was all peat smoke and embers, his smirk dark and knowing. “This is _my_ dream, _Valo-Kas,_ ” he poked the qunari in the chest. The Iron Bull blinked, his brow lifting bemusedly as Aran continued, “You don’t make the rules in my dream.” He tutted, winking, and catching Sera around the shoulders. “First we find the pulses! Then we drink!”

“Huzzah!” Sera caught him about the shoulders in turn, laughing, “Who’s Eamonn Cadash, by the way?”

“He’s a right fecking, mighty gaimbín of the highest order,” Aran told her seriously. “May his house fall upon him and the Dread Wolf suck the marrow from his bones.” 

Sera staggered to the side a step, nodding deeply, “I hope he gets stung by a bee every time he thinks of honey.”

“I would like to make splinters of his legs,” Aran crooned, smiling unsettlingly, “and a ladder of his spine.” He paused, blinking owlishly, “Or mayhap the reverse?”

“I think,” I held a hand out to him, “that there has been enough drink, Amatus.”

Aran’s brows drew together in sorrow, “There’s not enough liquor in the world.” But he took a step in, brushing his fingers against mine. For a heartbeat, I was in a thousand moments at once, memories of these light longing touches scrambling through my mind’s eye in a torrent. “You taste sad,” his voice caught me and dragged me back to the present. “You’re not supposed to be sad. You’re _alive_ and there’s light peering out through the darkness and everything’s fine. Everything’s fine.” He drew my hand to his lips, kissing my fingertips. “I’ve missed your hands,” he whispered, nuzzling my palm. 

“And I yours.” I smoothed my thumb over Aran’s stubbled cheek. “Come inside.”

“I want to,” he whispered fervently. “But I have to see them before I wake up. Just one more time. I have to see how they were.” His smile wobbled. His pupils were massive, the threads of blue and flickering green barely visible. “How everything was.”

“Come inside and I’ll show you,” I coaxed. “How much exactly have you had to drink?” I glanced past him to catch Bull’s eye; the warrior was watching Aran thoughtfully.

“Does it matter?” Aran chuckled, sniffing along my wrist, “I was so thirsty.” He licked my forearm, slick and chill, eliciting a number of inappropriate responses, “Still am. And - yep - No room for that in good dreams.” He darted backwards, throwing his arms around Sera again and taking her bottle as they tottered off towards the door. 

“Aran-“

“Careful.” The Iron Bull smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. I frowned as the qunari’s hand rested on my shoulder, “My bet is issrala poisoning. Keep things nice and happy and he’ll come through just fine.”

“Poisoning?” I asked sharply, following the wobbling pair, “Both of them?”

“Nah- Sera’s just drunk, I’d wager. And probably going to pass out in about five minutes.” He nodded to her head that was dropped to Aran’s shoulder as they fumbled with the latch on the door. 

“Are we under attack?”

“Real unlikely. That shit takes about an hour of exposure to get to this point. We’d have smelled it if it was here. And seen it. Big thick purple clouds.”

“You’re certain?”

“Oh, yeah,” the qunari chuckled darkly. “I remember the taste of it. Be happy. It could be a lot worse.” He smiled meaningfully at me. “Keep up.”

A peal of laughter rang out near the door as Aran stumbled, arms full of swaying elf. “No sleeping! No time for sleep!”

“Maybe less than five minutes,” the Iron Bull mused before lifting his voice, “I’ve got her, Boss. There’s wine down in the kitchens.” He scooped Sera over his shoulder and held the door. “Mind your step now. Stairs here get slippery.”

“The whole world is slippery,” Aran agreed sagely.

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“Bull-“ Aran paused, looking up at us from the dark, “I should have listened to you. We should have run. It’s my fault-“

“Now, Boss, that wine down there isn’t going to drink itself. Eyes on the prize.” 

Light and happy. Nice and calm. I flicked my wrist, lighting the torches in the stairwell and slipping down past Bull to Aran. “Lean on me. We’ll go to the secret place.”

Aran beamed. “I love that room.”

“I know you do.”

“D’you know- every time I’m in there- it’s like I can taste you all over again.” He snagged an arm around my waist. Strong and confident and so very, very present. “I want to taste you all over again.”

“We’ll see.”

Aran leaned into me as we tottered down the stairs, “I’ll convince you. I’m very convincing.” 

“I’m aware.” I drew a set of keys from my waist, unlocking the door to Aran’s hidden study. “In you go.”

Aran slipped ahead of me, spinning in a slow, lazy circle as I lit the lanterns inside. Shelves and display cases. Books and stones and sundries. The music from the main hall filtered down to us. The scent from the kitchens was thick and rich. 

The Iron Bull carefully deposited Sera in a corner chair, checking her eyes. “Sound asleep. She’s going to have a ripe headache in the morning,” he muttered with a sympathetic grin. “Couple casks of water should be a good start. I’ll stay here.” As I opened my mouth to protest, the qunari shook his head, “Nothin’ to do now but wait.” He glanced at Sera, “And send someone for Grim; he can get Sera back to her room to sleep it off in peace.”

Aran had his eyes shut, swaying to the sounds from above. 

“Dorian.” 

I dragged my gaze back to the qunari. 

“I’ve got this.”

Every instinct in me screamed not to let Aran out of my sight, but the Iron Bull was right. He had experience with Aran’s state, he was calmer than I, and Aran trusted him, at least for the moment. 

I went.


	2. of days not forgotten

I snagged one of Leliana’s scouts on his way out of the kitchens, sending him off to let Harding know that we’d located Aran and alerting him to the mission of procuring Grim from the tavern. Then I took an unsettling detour to the laboratory, my stomach feeling thick and twisted with nervous knots, and knocked once, then three times. 

Birashi answered the door. “Oh, it’s you.” He sounded tired. Looked it, too. Shadows rested beneath his pure onyx eyes like small grey feathers and strands of his hair had escaped their tight bonds to frame his face. It softened him. Made him seem younger and less… regally collected. “No change,” he reported, direct and matter-of-fact as usual. No change, indeed. 

Behind him, Solas was sitting by the bed we’d set up for Aran, deep in meditation. I cleared my throat, “He’s still…”

“Resting. He drank the broth after you left, then fell asleep again. _Ghi-len_ has been looking for him in dreams.” Birashi leaned his head against the door, seeming to need the support of the frame. When had he slept last? Leliana had wanted to keep as few people aware of Aran’s state as possible, especially given the gala above us, but that had meant a strict rotation of Birashi, Solas, Leliana, Cole, and I. Cole had been the worse for wear from the beginning. Birashi, it seemed, was following suit. I’d been wondering if he was feeling the absence of the Fade as strongly as Cole was experiencing its presence. “The Nightingale was here only a short time past. How is the engagement?”

It was amusing how Aran’s student viewed this social function as though it were a battle to be won or lost. Not entirely incorrect. “...eventful,” I hedged.

“Yes?” The elf quirked a brow. 

“I’ll explain later. I just needed to see…” I studied the figure sleeping soundly in the bed. Aran. Two places at once. “To see,” I finished, lamely. “I’ll return once things have been settled elsewhere. Have you seen Cole?”

Birashi shook his head, “Not since yesterday.”

Fine timing for him to be off on one of his secret missions. “Scout Harding knows where I am, if you need me, or if anything…”

“I’ll send word.”

* * *

Back in the study, I found Aran lying on the floor with his shoes off, his bare feet pressed to the wall, humming along with the fiddle music drifting down from above. Grim had evidently come for Sera in the time I had been gone, and the Iron Bull was sitting in the chair she’d been sleeping in, ankles crossed, book open in his lap. “Welcome back.”

“Thank you. My duties have been completed,” I greeted him. “I assume I haven’t missed much.”

“Grim came by. Harding stuck her head in. Otherwise, quiet as Chantry mice.”

“Excellent news. Good reading material?”

Bull snorted, “Not really. Wanna go grab me something better from the library?” He tipped the book up to reveal the embossed title ‘Volume 51: Annales Universitalis Phindalis, on the propagation of moss spores’. “Hard to imagine this used to be what the Boss did all day long.” 

I placed the casks of water on the floor beside the door and took a seat beside him. “That and fishing, yes,” I agreed.

“Hard to imagine,” the qunari repeated. Then added, “He does write real neat, though, huh?”

“Excellent penmanship.”

“Yeah, and real pretty calligraphy.”

I nodded, watching the freckled once-scribe blissfully out of tune with the world on the floor before us. “So we just… sit?”

“Pretty much.”

“This happened to you before?”

“Yeah.” 

“’Hard to imagine,’” I quoted him. It was true. Bull didn’t seem the type to loll helplessly in hallucinations. Aran… I suppose I’d gotten used to him being tossed by waves and pulled downstream. What a terrible thing to think of one’s paramour. 

The Iron Bull smirked, “Nice compliment coming from you.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. And yeah.” The qunari flipped a page in the book, “Just maintain the mood. That’s all.”

I folded my hands, watching Aran’s toes tap a rhythm on the wall. “He doesn’t need the water?”

“When he does, he’ll let us know.” Bull glanced at me, “Grab a book. Let him be, he’s fine.” He rested a hand on my shoulder. It shouldn’t have been gentle or comforting, shouldn’t have been capable of either, but there it was. “Relax.”

Relax. I exhaled deeply. I’d spent the last several days watching an elderly Aran sleeping, trying to adjust to the idea that soon - once the gala was completed and the guests had been ushered off - we would have to… to… And now here was yet another Aran, half naked on the floor, smiling bemusedly at us. Oh. 

I gave a helpless little wave.

Aran blinked lazily, his gaze catching on the movement, then floating off past us towards the far wall. 

“He’s so far away,” I heard my own voice quake.

“Light and easy,” Bull reminded me quietly.

“Yes. My apologies.” I shut my eyes. 

“No need. Just… you know.” He squeezed my shoulder again. “I’ve got this, if you wanna go blow off steam somewhere.”

“I’ll stay.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.” I shrugged him off and smoothed my hands down the back of my neck, sighing, “I can be happy.”

“When you say it like that, it’s real believable.” 

“What do you want from me?” I hissed.

“Nothing.” The qunari picked up his book again.

I simmered, but I knew that wouldn’t do any good. I straightened the folds of my robes and held my tongue; tried to conjure up memories of good times without thinking of the sadness and darkness that always followed right behind. I thought of a night not so very long ago when I’d held back honey-golden hair from a freckled face, feeling invincible and wise, and knowing with the vanity of short experience exactly what was needed and how I could make myself indispensable to this pretty, confounded youth. Wondering what those wide, soft blue eyes that followed me around Haven would look like if they really saw me. _What would he think if he knew me for what I was?_ Wondering if they did already. Wishing the look in them was something mirroring affection. 

There was a sharp gasping noise that drew my full attention back to Aran. His breath had quickened visibly, sweat standing out in quivering beads on his skin. So many needless scars, inside and out. 

“...never,” Aran whispered, seeing something that wasn’t there. “...I will never be like you.” He touched a point in the air above his face, brow furrowing, “-won’t. Can’t.” His breath hitched, “I can’t change, and I don’t want to.” He swallowed unsteadily, “I thought I said-”

The book was set aside; the Iron Bull quietly took a knee as I felt my stomach twist with helplessness. “Hey, Boss, just take in the room.”

“You tried,” he shook, the gleam of a tear’s trail cutting a course through the ash on his cheek, revealing lost freckles along the way. “You tried your best.”

“Listen to my voice,” the Bull intoned, his voice dropping like heavy stones into shallow water. “Follow me back to this room. The stone is warm and smooth and safe. ‘There is no chaos in the world, only complexity. Knowledge of the complex is wisdom. From wisdom of the world comes wisdom of the self. Mastery of the self is mastery of the world. Loss of the self is the source of suffering’...”  
  
“Suffering is a choice, and we can refuse it,” Aran whispered. [1]

“Refuse it now.”

Aran’s hand fell back to the floor, then skittered over his skin, the heel of his palm pressing to his chest, “...our choice...if all you do is turn away…”

“Not here, never here,” I whispered. Aran sketched a path to his shoulder with his fingertips, shivering, his lips moving soundlessly. “This is the place we get to hide, Amatus. This is where we can be who we are. Remember?”

“I can’t turn it on and off,” he sighed. “I can’t. I either am, or I’m not. This… this…” he sat up slowly, gazing at the ceiling.

“Aran... hmph!” I let out a muffled squawk as the Bull’s meaty palm closed over my mouth, pulling me back to the chairs. By the time I’d finished glaring at the qunari, Aran was on his elbows, head cocked in concentration, watching the ceiling with quiet appreciation. “...he wasn’t talking to us,” I acknowledged quietly.

“Nope.”

“I see.” I shook my head, flicking the other man’s hands away with a little flurry and beginning the myriad process of righting myself. How could I manage that? I could feel my embarrassment burning me from the inside out, and he kept watching me and touching me. The minutes ticked on interminably. Finally, the Iron Bull returned to his boring book and Aran studied nothingness, occasionally uttering a little noise of amusement or curiosity. 

_I can do this_. How many hours had I danced in and out of awareness as I studied or practiced, emerging each time to feel Aran’s fascinated attention warming me. Not interacting with him didn’t mean that I couldn’t appreciate that Aran was here, sharing this moment, in the same place and the same world. 

He was shivering again, despite the edible warmth infusing the room. I glanced down as the qunari’s hand snapped out to snag my arm. “I’m just getting him something for the cold.” The fingers released one by one, allowing me to quietly cross the room and draw a fur and a knit blanket from the chest. Ah, preparedness. I found my lips curving into a smile despite myself, remembering the diaphanous pleasure that had accompanied the addition of these elements to the room. Stairwells and closets, the darkened corner behind the bushes under the trees… we’d spent such a short span of time wrestling each other into breathlessness everywhere we could risk it throughout the fortress before everything had gone sideways, but we’d kept coming back to this room. Our first finding of each other. Our hideaway in the middle of everything. I unfurled the fur on the floor behind Aran, then draped the blanket over his shoulders; he rubbed his cheek against the knit, tugging it around himself, toes curling. 

What was it about the Iron Bull that even his smallest look of approval made something warm blossom in my chest. I lifted a lofty brow in reply and crossed my arms, returning to my seat and focusing my gaze on Aran. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. The qunari had… an effect. When I’d been in my doldrums, struggling to regain my balance after Haven, those little unasked for acknowledgments had kept me buoyed. Bound me into the present. We hadn’t been ‘together’, not in so many words, but we’d done our fair share of stress-relieving activities. Enough, at least, that I’d come to expect finding the qunari’s door unlocked in the middle of the night. 

I wondered, was it still? 

But the Iron Bull had thrown Aran at me like a targeted magic missile, breaking down the last of my barriers, and I had never looked back. 

That was it. 

Strange to think of it now, in hindsight. I’d been so recklessly hedonistic, falling headlong into Aran. Then I’d been grappling with my own demons, and then grieving Aran’s loss and finding him and losing him and on and on… All along, Bull had been a quiet, reliable boulder to cry on or rage at. Never flinching. Always with those inscrutable, quiet looks. A thick gray finger poked me, and I glanced up to find the qunari pointing to his own brightly smiling face comically. 

“Ruminate on your own time,” he rumbled, smirking.

“I was just thinking about… before.”

“Uh huh.” 

I blinked, feeling a flush warm my face at his steady, knowing expression. “You’re impossible,” I griped.

“Nah. _He’s_ impossible,” the Iron Bull nodded at Aran who was idly rolling around on the fur on the floor. His scarred lip flickered with amusement. “If someone magicked a mabari pup into a human, I think that’s about what they’d get.”

I forced myself to smile, sitting back. “I always pictured him more catlike.” 

The qunari snorted. “You would.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“ _You’d_ be a cat,” the Iron Bull shrugged. “Independent. Want things your own way. Coiled up tight. Suspicious.” He nodded to the man on the ground in front of us, “He’s a dog, if I’ve ever seen one.” 

There was such fondness in his voice, I couldn't quite figure out how to be offended, though I was certain that I wanted to be. Instead, I leaned back in my chair, crossing my arms, “Perhaps you should offer to play fetch with him when he comes out of this.”

“Did that before.” The Iron Bull mirrored me, kicking his heels out comfortably. “Bastard never brought the ball back.”

I cursed myself as I flushed again.

“That was a joke,” the Iron Bull chided.

“Yes, of course.” Was it though? I thought about Aran promising to see me cared for, wherever I was, no matter what. No jealousy. No expectations. ‘Do you want him?’ he’d asked so sincerely. Maybe Aran _had_ tried to bring the ball back after all. 

What an odd thought.

“We never talked about… things, you and I,” I murmured. 

“Nothing to talk about.”

“Isn’t there?”

The Iron Bull shrugged a massive shoulder, flipping another page in the dissertation on mosses. 

Try as I might, I couldn't get the image of Aran launching himself into the qunari’s hold out of my mind now. Those wiry, scarred, freckled arms wrapped around the warrior’s impressive bulk. “...what did he call you before?”

“Traitor.”

My breath caught. The Iron Bull was looking at Aran’s precise handwriting, no hint of what he was thinking in his expression. He wasn’t wrong. Did he spend a lot of time thinking about that? Why hadn’t he said anything? “I’d meant… on the battlements. Tonight.” 

Humor sliced through the inscrutable sudden quiet. “ _Valo-Kas_.” He chuckled, “The boss has an ear for languages.”

“That’s Qunlat, yes? What does it mean?”

The warrior glanced at me, creased with suppressed laughter. “It’s a kind of greatsword. Usually two-pronged. _Big_.”

I couldn’t for the life of me understand the reason for Bull’s amusement… until he smirked. _Smirked_. And _winked._ “ _Oh._ ”

“Real talent for subtle distinctions.”

“You call that subtle?”

“The connotation in the pronunciation… yeah.” His muscles flexed with suppressed laughter as he lazed in the chair, grinning indulgently. The Iron Bull nudged my boot with his own. “Don’t get your silky underthings in a twist. He’s swimming a bear fur. He’s out of his mind.”

Aran was, in actuality, attempting a fairly valiant backstroke across the floor, carrying the fur up and around himself as he did. I tilted my head, watching Aran puffing little bursts of breath. _Greatsword_. I had a sudden swimming sensation of my own, picturing my eager, fearless lover making use of the qunari’s impressive… weapon. Maker, I hadn’t thought about that particular piece of the Bull’s anatomy in any detail for quite some time. I had a sudden wish for Aran’s hallucinatory state; at least that would excuse the sudden need for quick, shallow breaths. And it occurred to me suddenly that the Iron Bull had no idea that Aran was not quite as out of his mind as he thought; that his fondness and fondling hadn’t been a mere product of chemicals. He was _remembering_ the other Iron Bull. The one who hadn’t betrayed him. ‘He needs to be grounded,’ he’d said. 

_Should_ I _tell him?_ I wondered. _Is it even my place to do so?_ After all, Aran had suggested facilitating a reconnection between us several times. Surely he wouldn’t mind the qunari knowing that - in some other version of reality - he’d done just that. Or something similar; I didn't have all the details. Perhaps that was reason enough to keep it to myself. Then again, my lack of detail on the subject wasn’t due to Aran withholding information. I had been the one who’d found the discussion too fraught to handle. 

Ashamed. I’d been ashamed and horrified of the idea of a version of myself existing who was so unchecked by that same shame and horror that he would give in to every rapturous, terrible desire. Those other Dorians that Aran knew: debauched, lecherous whores in their own unique ways... ‘always touched, always held, always loved.’ All the while, I’d been ignoring that what Aran was telling me, in part, was that he didn’t find any of it shameful. Was, in fact, a willing participant in… 

Andraste’s tears, had _I_ been shaming Aran this whole time? Hide it away. Keep it behind closed doors. _Literally_ behind closed doors. I found breathing suddenly quite difficult, looking around the small study. ‘This is where we can be who we are.’ _Only_ here. In our closet-analogue, or in places no one might recognize us or remember us. Denerim, I thought, had been safe. Wrongly, but still, I’d believed it. That last argument before he’d gone, about what we were to each other publically, which objectively was, by almost any standard, unexceptional. Support. Friendship. Lust. 

Love, simply put. 

I couldn’t even bring myself to say the word to the man. Always chiding him. Hushing him. Pushing him away. Suggesting to him in word and deed again and again that what was between us was wrong. Flawed. And that wasn’t even taking into account _Cole_. Of course _that_ was dangerous. Of course it _did_ matter what others saw. What they thought. 

Did that make it shameful? Wrong? 

Was it? That these two strange, utterly unabashed, tangible, generous men wanted me? Loved me? Despite my wicked, lascivious appetites. Perhaps, in part, because of them?

Cole wasn’t a desire demon, looking for a way into the world; he was here, very much flesh and blood, as much a soldier of the Inquisition as anyone. More so. And I had never had a lick of interest in using Aran for any sort of social mobility, nor had I suspected that Aran, with his bullish stubbornness, could really be manipulated to such a degree. 

Why in Thedas had I convinced myself that those were real things to be feared? 

“He cares for you.” I heard myself say the words as though from afar. I looked at the Iron Bull, my heart hammering. “He’s terrible at separating the realities.” The qunari just looked at me. “There’s a place - very likely the one he just came from - where he and you and I are…” I lifted my brows. 

“What?” 

“Lovers.”

Bull’s expression remained inscrutable. “That so?”

I inclined my head. “What I mean to say is… while he _is_ attempting to swim a bear, that much - at least - wasn’t a hallucination. At least, not in the same way. More of a misunderstanding...” I hummed, returning my gaze to where Aran lay still on the ground, his fingers lightly playing with the fur. Floating, perhaps. Or in some other fantasy now. 

“He told you that?”

“Among other things. Yes. When we first found him again, and since.”

“Funny. I only remember you screeching about Leliana.” 

“Can you _blame_ me?” I shuddered for effect. 

The Iron Bull shrugged. “Dunno. I always did have a thing for redheads; they’re so feisty.”

“Ugh.”

“Thought it was a one off.”

“She was.” _Thank the Maker,_ I added silently. Sometimes I wondered whether the idea of Aran with Leliana horrified me because she was a woman or because she was just… herself. Shadows with sharpness lurking. Something for later thought, perhaps.

“So you and me and him… that’s a running thing?”

“Apparently.”

“But it’s not us. It’s them. And him.”

“Yes.”

The Iron Bull uttered an eloquent, “Huh.” He paused, squinting at Aran, “Huh.” 

“Try not to overexert yourself.” I’d expected a third grunt, or a wry comment, or a joke, or… anything but the quiet that slowly rose, threatening to drown us. What had possessed me to mention it at all? Did I imagine Bull would have an easier time adjusting to the idea of other versions of himself, carrying on different lives, out of his control? I snuck a glance at the qunari’s face. Blank. _Well done, Dorian._ “I thought you deserved some context.”

“Yeah.”

“...in case he does or says something else. So you won’t be caught off guard.”

“Okay.”

I frowned, “Your monosyllabic replies are filling me with a sense of ease.”

“Good.”

“That was sarcasm.”

“Huh.” And there was the third meaningless noise for the trifecta.

Oh, well done, indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] The Qun, Canto 1


	3. and the wing'd cup-bearers of the tall sky-vaulting

I admit that I leapt to my feet at the soft knock on the door. Anything to escape that moment. Only it was a familiar redhead on the other side of the door. She was in Inquisition regalia, her hair a smooth curtain around her face. “So he is here.”

“Leliana!” Aran chirped from the floor. 

_Now_ he was talking to someone outside of his head? “It’s complicated.”

“When is it not?” She tilted her chin, “Then the other is...?”

“Still the same.”

“Ah, interesting,” she adjusted her gloves. “Can I see him?”

I shook my head. 

“Is there a reason why not?”

I felt a gentle thud on my shoulder, too light to be Bull’s hand, and I felt a sudden sinking feeling. Aran’s arms twined around my waist; his cheek just below my own, his scruff just long enough to be soft against the skin on my shoulder. I could only imagine what was going through Leliana’s mind at the sight of him half-naked behind me. “He’s indisposed?” I hadn’t meant to make it a question, but my voice betrayed me.

“You look nice,” Aran said, warming my back, skin to skin, “Now I think of it, everyone looks nice.”

“It’s a party,” Leliana murmured.

Aran chuckled, “That’s what he said.” He poked me in the side for clarification. 

She met my eyes, “Indisposed.”

“It’ll pass,” Bull’s voice boomed from behind us. “Come back inside, Boss.”

Aran ducked under my arm and scooped Leliana up. “It’s good to see you.”

I’d never seen her look more out of her element than hanging in Aran’s grip. If I’d tried to hug her like that, she likely would have thrown me to the ground and possibly stabbed me once or twice for good measure, but she just dangled in his arms, absently patting his shoulder. “And you. Put me down.”

He did, squeezing her gently, “Where’s Josie? And Varric?”

“They’re in the Main Hall. I can-“ 

He moved too fast, dashing away from us. “ _Vishante kaffas,_ ” I swore. “Get back here!”

I could hear Leliana and Bull behind me, but I didn’t stop to look. Aran had darted around a corner and I ran to keep up, but even so… he was gone by the time I turned. Empty corridors in three directions. “How-“ I panted, “is he so fast if he’s been poisoned?”

”Poisoned?” Leliana repeated.

“Issrala makes you stronger, faster, more resistant to pain…” Bull had caught up to us, looking around.

“I begin to guess why you’ve experienced it,” I leaned against the wall, catching my breath.

“It also makes you extremely suggestible. Your body is stronger. Your mind is a wet noodle.” He hadn’t risen to my bait. If anything, he looked worried. “We need to find him fast.”

We split up without further discussion. There were only three ways he could have gone and we knew where he was headed. 

It was easy to find him in the Main Hall. He was the Herald of Andraste, the one everyone had come to see, and he was shining with fevered energy. The crowd moved around him like leaves in a pool, reacting to ripples in their stream, almost without realizing they were doing it. 

Well. Josie had gotten what she wanted. He wasn’t wearing the priceless garments she and Vivienne had commissioned, but he was bare to the low-slung waist in worn black leather, heedlessly wearing his armor of scars, as visceral and confident and firmly alive as anyone could have asked for. He seemed ignorant of the bows and curtsies around him as he bee-lined through the courtiers towards Josephine. Leliana’s shoulder brushed mine. 

“He _looks_ sober,” she murmured.

Aran caught Josephine by the hand, surprising a squeak out of her in mid-conversation with a Ferelden Bann, and pulling her into his arms. He held her like a lover long-parted, close and tight, murmuring something against her ear that made her eyes widen and glisten. 

“I take it back.” Leliana looked to me. “Go get him.”

* * *

As the musicians struck up again, Aran spun Josephine down through the path he’d cut. He was light and laughter, utterly uncouth. She was a swirl of gauze and gold. This was what they wanted. The hero and the diplomat. Uncomplicated, heteronormative hope. They could paint their expectations on this scene easily and go away happy. 

But Aran loved the truth more than anything. He was frustratingly focused on it. Who he was. What he was. What made him capable of the things these people wanted from him. I cut through the crowd to the edge, watching them spin past. 

I knew the moment he caught sight of me. His eyes softened. His smile took on that slightly sideways curve he always got when he was looking at me; his knowing glow that I’d so often asked him to get a handle on. _It will give us away,_ I’d told him, and he’d looked at me with a look I’d found difficult to define at the time. In hindsight, I imagined it had been a little sad, a little pitying. He’d never cared. Not once. The only reason there was even a question about us was because _I’d_ tried to keep us hidden. I’d hidden behind excuses and politics, but the truth was: I was afraid. Even now, I was thinking of ways to spin this friendly, hallucinogenic frolic into a curtain to hide behind. 

And I had thought that I was brave. Showing off my debauchery, glorying in my sharp edges. Varric had been right: I _was_ all sparkle and no heat. The true fire was hidden behind the cascade of sparks, only for the one who held the stick. And not even then, I raged at myself. 

I’d listened to Birashi’s stories; our shared Aran’s oral history. He’d left us and he’d never made his way home again. Always wondering. Wishing. Dreaming. Thinking he might someday find us again.

But here Aran was. Again. Now. Actively countering those tales by his very existence. Something had changed. Which meant things _could_ change.

I could. 

Perhaps I was still afraid. No. I was. I imagined that my poorly kept secret - my foolish attempt at a confidential love affair - with this wreck of a man would dissipate as soon as attention was turned fully upon it, like a shadow when a lamp was turned up. But Aran, who travelled time and space and survived the Fade and did impossible things, loved me. He loved me in a half dozen permutations, in a half dozen worlds, where he sought me out again and again. 

I stepped into the clearing and bowed, heart hammering in my throat as he and Josephine slowed to meet me. 

He was watching me curiously, sweat beading on his brow, his pupils so wide and dark that they absorbed all the light from all the eyes around us. I bowed low and felt him close in, smelled him, fire and wine, encompassing me. 

“Hello, you,” he tucked his fingers under my chin to lift my face. 

“Hello.” I held out a hand for him and watched his smile bloom across his whole beautiful face, freckles and scars and ash and all, as he grasped my fingers. “May I cut in?” It was only the barest of nods to formality because I wasn’t about to let go of him. Not now. Not ever again. I could feel my fingers quaking, but his were warm and steady. 

Josephine closed her hand over ours with a little squeeze, then backed away. The music was still playing. It would play until the dawn came.

So we danced.

Pair by pair, Skyhold’s visitors peeled out from the walls to join us. 

Us. Before the world.

Lightning didn’t scorch the ground at our feet. The ceiling didn’t collapse. Nothing earthshaking happened at all. Aran was an excellent dancer, as I was. We cavorted with grace and equity. 

We. Together. Unified. I felt impossibly stronger for it. Strong enough to face all the fears I’d hidden within for so long. “Aran, I-“

He shook his head. “Tell me later. So I can listen.”

 _There might not be a later_ , I thought, but I couldn’t shake Bull’s warning from my mind. I cupped his back as we turned and pulled him closer, brushing our lips together in what may well have been the most chaste kiss I’d ever experienced. It was the closest I could come to the words threatening to burrow out of my chest. I felt like my skin might well have alit with some internal glow. 

He exhaled wine and something sickly sweet, reminding me that he wasn’t really here, not entirely. Here I was have earth-shattering revelations and he was missing them. He tipped against me, echoing the almost-not-kiss, and gazed up at me with so much affection I thought I might combust. 

I let my mask fall away, watched it move like clouds across the moon in my reflection in his blown out pupils. 

“Dorian?” he whispered.

“Yes?”

He smiled, adoration in every inch of his face. “I’m going to be sick in a minute.”


	4. In heart’s drumming

Aran was thoroughly sick, though he held out long enough for us to get outside and behind a tree before it happened. The sludge he emitted was grotesque, sickening sweet-scent wrapped around a sour core, black and viscous. Watching it soak into the shadows and soil, I wondered if the tree would survive it.

He shivered in the night air, and when he leaned back into my arms, I wrapped the loose folds of my robe around him, rubbing his arms. “Any more?”

He wheezed pitifully. “I’m empty.”

I kissed the back of his sweaty head, “Will you come back inside and lay down now?”

“Varric…”

“I will send for Varric once you’ve rested a little while. If you agree to stay put. Can you manage that for me?”

“Yup.” He turned towards me and my eyes watered as I carefully rotated his face away from me. 

“No offense, Amatus, but you’re disgusting.”

He laughed. _Laughed_. Breathlessly, certainly, but it was something. 

* * *

As we made our way back to the hidden study, we found the Iron Bull waiting outside the door, arms crossed, restless.

“He threw up.”

“No shit, spinning around like that.” He kicked open the door, “Get.”

Aran blinked at him owlishly, but went inside. 

“There’s no need to be nasty,” I murmured. “He’s not in his right mind.”

“ _You_ are; I can be nasty to you all I want.”

I peered at him curiously, “ _Me_? Why?”

“He’s _fragile._ ” 

I lifted my brow. “Hardly. He’s many things, but not that.”

Bull growled something foreign under his breath. 

Decidedly unhelpful. 

“He shouldn’t have been with that many people. He needs to be isolated until it wears off. And you were up there gallivanting like-“

“How exactly did you want me to extricate him from that crowd? Throw him over my shoulder?”

“I would have.”

“Well, you didn’t, and I’m not you, thank the Maker for that. I kept things nice and light and easy, just as you told me to. You can help or you can leave.” 

He huffed following me inside. Aran was back on the bear fur, curling in the knit blanket. “How’s it going, Boss?”

“Stop interrupting,” he muttered, muffled.

“And we’re back,” The Iron Bull dropped into his corner chair with a grunt. 

I joined him, perching on the bench against the wall to watch Aran cavort on the floor. “How long is this supposed to last?” I asked.

“Depends how much of a dose he got. Could be another hour. Could be a day.” 

“Wonderful.” I tucked my knees up to my chest, “Does the black ooze that just came out of him help with the timeline?”

He ticked his head to the side, horns atilt, “Yeah, actually. Real sweet smelling?”

“Frighteningly so.”

“Then we’re about halfway through.”

“ _I_ _nventori lucis soli invicto augusto,_ ” I murmured ironically, then had a disturbing thought. “Is he going to do that again?”

“Probably.”

I shuddered, thinking of another time in this same room when I’d pulled dripping black ichor from Aran’s head. “Can we clean him up a touch, at least? He’s foul and he keeps trying to lick ichor into my mouth.”

Bull chuckled.

“Don’t look so pleased. He’s as likely to assault you with it as me right now.”

The qunari winced. “Ah, right.”

I sighed, “I’d take the stench of his dratted pipe over the smell of any more of that… horror.”

“That might not be a bad idea,” Bull itched his chin. “Could do an incense thing with the herbs, maybe? Water down some wine.”

“Heavenly.” I slipped across the room, rooting in the drawers of the desk for his pouch of herbs and the bottles I’d taken to storing in here. Lyrium. Elf root. A pouch of his healing herbs. Red wine… it was a shame to water down a good vintage, but Aran’s tongue was still black with the sludge he’d emitted. I poured one part wine to two parts water and added a healthy dollop of elfroot for good effect, bringing the glass to where Aran lay. “Thirsty?”

“Not _now_ ,” he muttered peskily.

“You can get right back to whatever it is, once you drink this.” I pressed the rim of the glass to his lips and helped him to take several healthy sips. “Thank you.”

“It was a long time,” he whispered, looking past my shoulder.

“I know, Amatus.” I brushed his hair from his cheek and helped him lie back again. “Rest.”

“Too much rest...” As he drifted into muttering in Elvhen, I placed a bucket near his head and then busied myself looking for a method by which to burn his herbs as an incense. 

“You’re a good nurse.”

I rolled my eyes. 

“Really. You never thought about learning healing magic or something useful?”

“‘Something useful’?” I balked.

“You know. Something less creepy.”

“You’re an imbecile,” I told him simply. 

“Maybe. But I’m an imbecile with a greatsword.” 

He was smirking, insufferably. Apparently his time adjusting to Aran’s alternate Iron Bull had concluded. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

“How many other you’s does he have?”

I glanced up from the bowl I was filling with herbs. “Four. Or seven. We’re not sure if there’s overlap.”

“And how many of me?”

“That he sleeps with? Just the one,” I paused, “That I know of.”

“You don’t know?”

I shrugged. “When your lover has upwards of four other people he’s sleeping with who you know you’ll never meet or interact with, it all becomes rather intellectual. And distracting. And…” I paused, eyeing my proportions, “No. That isn’t true. I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to hear about who I might have been, so I avoided the issue in its entirety. We have quite enough on this plane to keep us busy. And, in any case, what he _has_ told me is… disheartening, I suppose.” 

“Disheartening how?”

“Ah,” I shrugged, “the other Dorians… they’re either willfully empowered or terribly vain or irrepressibly fearless or depressingly cruel…” I shrugged. “Either I hated them or I wished I was like them or some combination thereof. And he wanted to talk about it and them and how I feel… oh, endlessly. Of course, talking about it and them and how I feel meant actually identifying how I feel about it and them and him, so the whole conversation was moot.” I huffed, glancing across the room at Bull. He had his thoughtful expression on. How much was mask? I wondered. I often wondered if his blank, unreadable expression might well be the real one. “What?”

“So, you _are_ okay with it? Or you’re not?”

“Okay with what?”

He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, intently. “Well, they’re not really you. Or me. They’re just people, strangers, maybe similar but not the same.” Clever Bull, skipping right past the madness to the simple facts. “So… he’s basically got a stable of random guys he’s banging, and he just happens to have a particular type he goes for.” 

“...not exclusively,” I muttered thinking of our ephemeral Cole, “but yes, what of it?”

“So what’s that like for you?”

“Why is it any of your business?”

He held a hand up and counted on his fingers, “You told me about it. Seems I’m one of the types. I’m your friend.”

“Is that what you are?”

He looked at me steadily. “Yes.”

I took an intensive study of the bowl of herbs, shifting it this way and that. Oh, for Cole’s gift of insight. Oh, for Aran’s gift for communication. “It troubled me at first.” I set the bowl atop a small metal plank and flexed a ball of veilfire beneath it. The room flushed with the fluttering green of its glow. “Then… I thought I’d worked my head around it. Then I found it was easier to pretend it was all just… stories, I suppose. Nothing to do with me.”

“And now?”

“Now… Thinking of it, I feel… fine,” I realized, saying it aloud. “Odd.”

“Seems unfair.”

I brightened the veilfire, watching the herbs begin to smolder. “You think so?”

“He’s got a stable. You’ve only got him, and he’s gone half the time.”

“They aren’t horses. They’re people.” _And I don’t have only him._ Not for the first time that night, I wondered where Cole had gotten to. He ought to have felt this Aran’s arrival, but perhaps the trapped storm of Fade energy from the first Aran was distracting him? 

“But you’re still screwed… not getting screwed.”

I tucked my tongue behind my teeth. “Bull.”

“Just trying to get a handle on it.”

“There’s nothing to-” 

“Isn’t there?”

The smoke was curling in ribbons from the bowl. I poured a second glass of wine and lifted it as a question. He nodded and I poured a third. “Why must everything be talked to death?” I muttered, but the events of the past months compounded with this evening had left me raw and weakened. I thought of my father standing in Priori’s office after I’d fought with the son of one of his allies in the Magisterium. The polished marble. The heat from the switch still stinging my skin. And my father’s dispassionate gaze as he walked past me, telling me to keep my feelings to myself.

Hide what you are. Hide what you feel. Hide hide hide.

The Iron Bull was watching me silently when I realized I’d been standing there staring at the glasses. Had he spoken? Had I? I handed him the glass of unwatered wine and sipped my own, thinking through it as I spoke, “When I stopped thinking about them as me, it made me feel... uncertain. I couldn’t rightly feel betrayed because I’d categorically refused to let us _be_ anything that _could_ be betrayed. Aran is Aran. I trust him. We all do. Even when he’s mad as two dwarves in a tower, he’s still… him.” Muttering gibberish on the floor in a hallucinogenic haze. “I know where I stand with him because he takes great pains to make certain that I know. And he trusts me. He always has, even when everyone else suspected me of… oh, anything that they could come up with. He’s told me everything I’ve allowed him to. He would likely inundate me with details if I asked. He’s wounded inside and out, endlessly… and I think he may keep himself distracted from the things he can’t control with these… dalliances. No. Not- he cares, genuinely, for all of us and all of them. I think he focuses on creating joy and pleasure because it’s something… something…”

“That he can control.”

“Yes. I’m sure that’s not all there is to it, but it seems… close. Happiness. Pleasure. Hope. And why shouldn’t all those things be possible?” I ask quietly. “The way he talks about them… the way he looks when he’s remembering… I think it’s…” I dabbed my bottom lip with my tongue. Nothing about Aran ever felt wrong until I stepped away and looked at it from the outside. But Bull was impassive, watching, without any of the external judgement I always projected onto myself. “Beautiful,” I admitted. “And knowing that he’s found someone to look after him in those places I can’t reach… it’s comforting. So… I suppose that is what it’s like for me. Beautiful and comforting. Strangely thrilling, paradoxically.” 

“Huh.”

“Here we go again,” I sighed.

He chuckled, “Not what I expected. I thought you’d be chewing through your arm in jealousy.”

“I have moments,” I admitted. “But we seem to just… talk our way out of those.”

“But he’s jealous.”

“Wouldn’t _that_ be nice? Aran is the opposite of jealous. He _wants_ me to- He’s gone to great effort to make sure the other Dorians have… Aran-alternatives.”

“He wants you to find someone else. For when he’s not here.” Dastardly, clever Bull, never letting me off easy.

“Or when he is. Who can say. He’s a fiend. He loves me, I know that, but I always thought that love was selfish and he… is selfish, I suppose, in his way,” I looked at my glass, thinking it through. It was embarrassing talking about this, “He wants me to be loved, no matter what. Regardless of everything. It’s obscene. If you had seen the _pleasure_ in his expression when he learned that Cole and I had continued without him when he was...” I trailed off, realizing what I’d said. I looked up, already beginning to weave a barrier with my fingers. 

But The Iron Bull wasn’t attacking; he was sitting forward with his empty glass, watching me attentively. “When he was what?”

“Pardon?”

“You and the weird squirrely kid were banging without him when he was… what?”

“Gone,” I whispered, shocked. “When he was gone. Before Adamant.” I blinked, “You knew.”

“I’m Ben-Hassrath,” he shrugged as if that were enough of an explanation, setting the glass aside. “Pretty sure it’s just me, Varric, and Red who know, and we all know you like your secrets.”

“Secrets,” I repeated dully. Did I still have any?

“Yeah. So how’s it work?”

“With- with Cole?” I stuttered.

“Fuck, no. Don’t get me wrong. I like the guy plenty, but his weird shit is still… weird, you know?”

I felt a quiver in my stomach. “You get used to it,” I murmured weakly.

“ _You_ might.” He leaned towards me and the quiver became tight and stretchy. “You talk about it with them before or something?”

“I don’t… before…” I knew what he was asking, “I don’t know. I haven’t… Ah… needed to.”

“Do you want to need to?”

My gaze dipped traitorously to his scarred lips. 

He grinned, sitting back, “My door’s always open.”

“Ah.” I cleared my throat.

“If and when.”

“Right.” The wine, herbs, and my own infernal hormones were making me dizzy. “I’ll just… step out for a moment of air, shall I?”

He _smirked_. “Go right ahead.”


	5. A voice to answer my call.

Air, of course, was in short supply. The lower levels were close and hot. The upper levels were full of noble tourists from the nine corners of Thedas. There were only three places in the whole of the fortress where I’d found I could truly let my guard down, and of those three, two were currently occupied by incarnations of a certain perplexing and unreachable nobleman from the Free Marches. 

If there were two of him, were there more? In the same way that there were other versions of myself? Was one of these men, in actuality, not the man I had known? They both seemed to know me; did that mean something? Were we destined to circle each other in parallel worlds, on and on, forever, like planets or Rivaini spirit magnets? 

It was enough to give a person a headache. 

I drew up the folds of my robe into a makeshift hood and moved as unobtrusively as I could manage through the crowd of the main hall, ducking into the door behind the throne and alighting the stairs. The library might have held more answers, but for now I would have to restrain my fraught curiosity and look instead for temporary solace. A bit of space to clear my head.

‘My door is always open’, indeed. 

The qunari had no sense of tact or timing whatsoever. How the fellow managed to succeed as a spy anywhere but this barbaric wasteland was a complete mystery. No. That was unfair. Just because I was out of sorts didn’t mean he had done anything wrong. He’d asked questions. He’d listened. He hadn’t judged.

He _knew_.

He knew about Cole and had said nothing. Seemed, in fact, unphased. How long had he known? Had he actually spoken about it with Leliana or Varric? Or was he simply confident in his supposition based on whatever evidence he’d used to glean for himself-

A tea cup soared past my face, bumped into the stone wall, and landed on the floor with a dainty thunk. I picked it up curiously, turning the slender ceramic this way and that, but the piece was completely unmarked. “Fascinating.” I turned to find Cole cross-legged on the desk, scowling at me. “Was this meant to get my attention? Or were you aiming for my head?”

“He won’t bind me.”

I looked from the cup to Cole, centering myself in the present. “That sounds like good news… Who are we speaking of?” I carefully set the teacup on a shelf. He looked so young: fretting and dejected, arms crossed in restrained fury. 

“Solas. He won’t bind me, even though I asked.”

“Good grief, why would you ask such a ridiculous- and why would you ask _Solas_ , of all people?”

“Because I knew you would say ‘no’.”

“Did you?”

“You worry all the time. _Is this what he wants? Does he only do these things because Aran wants him? Because I do?_ I don’t. That isn’t it. I’m a person. I’ve told you a hundred times.”

He had me there. “That’s certainly true.” I leaned a hip on the desk, leaning back. “Would you care to explain, then, this sudden impulse to divest yourself of free will?”

“He took me.”

I gaped, “ _Solas_?”

“No! The Elder One,” Cole shuddered. “He took me and he used me against the Inquisition. I watched it through Aran’s eyes. He had to kill me to stop me, and you left, and he went into the Fade to find me… only I wasn’t me anymore and he couldn’t. Not even with their help.” 

“Whose- hold that thought.” I absorbed this burst of information with a series of steadying breaths. Little wonder the poor fellow had been so distant and flighty the last weeks. Could anyone in my life manage to be uncomplicated for just a short moment? Both unfair and uncharitable, I self-corrected; _be better, Dorian_. “Cole,” I began.

“Tell him he has to. Tell him I need him to bind me. Tell him why. Tell him it’s important. So I’m safe.”

I studied his worried expression and my heart ached for him. “No.”

“Then you have to do it!”

“I do not, as a matter of fact.” I sat up, folding my hands, “I like you very much the way you are and I’m not of a mind to participate in your ritual suicide.”

“I’ll hurt people. I’ll hurt _you_.”

“I doubt that.” 

“I saw it happen!”

“You saw a _possibility._ A remote one.” I met his gaze, “And we will find a way to avoid that, without losing you.”

“I wouldn’t _be_ lost. Only bound. That’s better than… _Walls around what I want, blocking, bleeding, making me a monster._ ”

“That’s exactly what it would be, Ocellus.”

“No! He is bound, too. He isn’t a monster. The binding makes him free. It could make me free, too.”

This time, I followed Cole’s leaping thought and knew exactly who ‘he’ was. “Yes,” I agreed, “and Aran seems oh, so pleased to be so ‘free’, utterly free of control over himself.”

Cole frowned. “No, he doesn’t.”

I squinted into those concerned, guileless, cornflower orbs and fought a smile. “I stand corrected.”

“You’re sitting.”

“I sit corrected, then.”

Cole nodded, looking at his hands. “You don’t think I’ll like it either, but that doesn’t matter.”

“It matters very much. More than anything.”

“ _The room with the desk that seemed so much larger when you were small; ‘if I do that, I’ll be chained for eternity, screaming on the inside’._ _You’d practiced writing your name just like his, hour after hour, and now you would never be able to look at it the same._ ”

Time and time again, I fooled myself into thinking I was used to Cole and could simply take him in stride... and then the fellow would draw crystallized memories from the dark recesses of my mind and set me a-wobble again. I forced myself to relax the sudden tightening of my jaw. “Knowing what is possible,” I began in a carefully moderated voice, “allows us to prepare for and prevent eventualities. There are several common ways to prevent a spirit from being bound, and several hundred more theories of methods to accomplish the same. If that’s even what you are.” I studied Cole’s face, all angles and impossibility, the damp trails in the spray of mud on his cheek. 

“I know what I am.”

“Do you?” I traced the track of those tears, from the soft flesh beneath his eyes to the tip of his pointed chin. “Could you explain it to me? Because Solas and I both have copious experience with spirits in this world and in the Fade, and you are unlike any we have encountered. It could help us to help you, if we knew.”

“I had started to forget. But Birashi… we are both... I can feel it when I’m near him. He reminds me of the Fade. Not like you do. He… expects things to obey his will. The spirits that are dormant here. He touches them and they awaken, not lost like the others. Half-sleeping. He wants them to answer, but they rarely do. It makes him lonely. I know that feeling. Knew it. Before...” He sniffled, “I need this, Dorian. Maybe Birashi needs it, too. It isn’t safe for either of us.”

“What did Solas say when you asked him?”

“He said he didn’t practice blood magic.”

I nodded. Good for Solas. Unexpected, but good for him. 

“And that it would be abuse.”

“It would.”

“Even if I ask?”

I frowned, thinking of the notes from my other self. Words the Archon had given Aran for solace. The whole truth? Perhaps not. “Yes. I think so. Even if you ask.”

He sighed. “Solas said there were amulets the Rivaini used to keep spirits safe from blood magic.”

“See?” I took his hand, encouraging. His skin was dry as parchment, soft and strong as halla leather. “There you are, then.”

“What happens if he can’t find one?”

“I will help him. And if that doesn’t work, we’ll figure out how to create such a talisman ourselves.”

“What happens if you can’t?”

“We’ll kill Corypheus before he has a chance to do anything nefarious to you.” Cole shivered, folding against my side like a soft, warm blanket. I wrapped an arm around his shoulders and held him close. “I wish you’d talked to me about this. I’ve been wondering where you were.”

“I should have,” he admitted, “I was afraid you would be angry.”

“Well, I’m not,” I kissed the top of his head; he smelled like warm days in fields full of flowers. “And even if I were, you still should have told me.”

“I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt anyone innocent ever again.” Cole sighed, and his breath in the cool tower turned to mist around us. Always something new. He turned to look at me, “It’s not the first time.”

“It’s the first time I’ve seen it.”

“Not- no. Aran.” He peered through his bangs, “It isn’t the first time.”

“What?”

“More than one. They overlap. He’s so bright, like counting birds against the sun, all the hopes he carries, the fears he fights, the weight that bends and doesn’t break, time twisting and taunting… He tries to keep secrets from himself. He can’t hide them from me. Most of them. Even then, it isn’t him that hides.” 

“Cole…”

“You unlearned some of the shadows,” he murmured. “Can you see more clearly now?”

I shivered, tasting tears I hadn’t known I had shed. “Perhaps. Yes.”

“I’m glad.” He slipped from my grasp to paw through papers on the desk. “Here.” He unearthed a pile of string and scraps of parchment, much like the one we’d found in the dwarven thaig on the Storm Coast. 

I plucked at the scraps, frowning at the nearly illegible scrawl. A replica of Aran’s web now strung around Leliana’s lair in the crow’s nest, but here was another version entirely. 

“You asked me what I could see of what he remembered.”

I looked between him and the pile. “And this… you did all of this.”

“I want to help,” he shrugged. “Helping… it will always be a part of who- what- I am. Me.”

“You beautiful disaster,” I whispered. Not Aran’s trajectory through time. His trajectory through _this_ time, when and where and where he’d come from. I spread the papers out, scouring the new web. “Now if I could only compare…” I felt a warm breeze and felt Cole disappear. “Cole,” I whispered. “We would be lost without you.”


	6. Misty in mem’ry

“Water…?” Aran asked, ragged. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been throwing up, but he was fairly certain he’d been lying on the floor waiting to die for at least an hour. Now that was over, he was just tired. Thirsty. Stinking of sweat and toxins and ash. 

“Yeah, Boss.” The Iron Bull shifted seamlessly from the latest chapter - drying and then grinding three specific species of moss rather than grinding before drying - to pouring water into a glass and bringing it to the man on the ground. “Slow.”

Aran darted him an annoyed look as he was forced to take sips rather than guzzle the contents of the glass. “I’m not a child,” he croaked.

“Glad to hear it. Did you want more?”

Aran wrinkled his nose. “Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Please.”

The Iron Bull laughed out loud at the pure, woeful petulance. “Shit. I bet you’re a handful, huh?”

“You’re telling me.” Aran drank again, slowly, then curled on the floor on his side. “I remember this… this room. Is there… music somewhere?”

“Yeah, upstairs. Josephine’s got a whole slew of fancy types up there. You got a good look at ‘em a few hours ago.”

“A fete,” Aran whispered. “It wasn’t a dream, was it?”

“Nope. You’re back where it all began. You showed up here poisoned.”

“Drugged, you mean.” 

“Yeah. That’s about the size of it.”

“Was it all real?”

“Dunno, Boss. You spent a while talking to the air, so I’d say ‘no’, but I don’t know what you remember.”

“The dreadnoughts. The army. The fire.” Aran looked at his hands, still dusted with ash, and ran his hands through his hair, ruffling more out. He shuddered as it floated around him, shutting his eyes against tears, “So they are dead, then. All of them.” He buckled as though he were going to throw up again, heaved, but there was nothing left to give. He just braced against the floor, trying to breath until finally he could again. “...What can I do?” he asked, barely above a whisper. 

“Boss?”

“To convince you. What can I do to make you see? To make you believe?”

The Iron Bull shifted onto one knee, refilling the glass for the third time. “You’re good at that: the whole sad, wistful, ‘let me help’ thing. Two problems with that. One, I don’t need help. Two, you need to save it for when you’ve got an audience to really get the mileage. Dorian, for example, would lap this shit up.”

“He died. Again,” Aran said without inflection. “They all died. Again. They beat you until you collapsed because you wouldn’t let him go. He wasn’t breathing, but you wouldn’t let go. It wasn’t you, this time. It was that conniving, self-serving, sick and twisted piece of shit. I heard him laughing. Then I woke up in a room full of smoke,” he sat up, “and I started seeing things. Hearing things. Feeling things.”

“I know.”

“You know? How?”

“I’ve been there. Issrala’s a trip.” The Iron Bull handed the glass over and let Aran drink on his own this time. “Good that they thought you were fit for re-education. If they hadn’t, you'd have been breathing qamek and you’d be dead now.”

“Like everyone else.”

“Would that be better?”

Aran eyed him over the rim of the glass, panting as he swallowed the glass in one gulp. “What can I do?” he asked again. 

“Boss. I told you what I was from the beginning.”

“I know.”

“So what are you asking for?”

“I don’t want to be your enemy.”

“No kidding,” The Iron Bull deadpanned. “For what it’s worth, I don’t want to be yours, either.”

“I’ve seen you on both sides of this thing-“

“No. You haven’t. You’ve seen guys who look like me, talk like me, but they aren’t me.”

Aran frowned. “Fair point.” He cleared his throat, “I’ve seen how things might turn out, for someone similar to you. Is that fair?”

“Sure.” The qunari held out his hand and refilled the glass halfway before handing it back. “And?”

“And you have a family here, who will let you be exactly what and who you want to be.”

“I’ve got family in Par Vollen, too. Who let me be who and what I want to be.”

“While you’re here, _away_ , yes, but when you go back? What’s next? Re-educating the unworthy? Training someone else to go out and take your place?”

“There’s a cycle to things.” The Iron Bull smiled easily, “And there’s a lot you don’t know. Stuff you can’t know until you see it for yourself.”

“I’ve seen it,” Aran murmured darkly.

“Yeah? You been to Par Vollen? The mornings where the streets are full of people going about their lives building houses, baking bread, fixing the wheels of their carts? The pyramids? The sun rising through the arches? You seen all that?” The Iron Bull quirked a brow, “Didn’t think so. The Qun’s not this big, scary thing everyone makes it out to be. It’s just a different way. War always highlights the ugly side. You think those bandits we killed to make the Hinterlands safe didn’t have dreams? There they were, thinking that between the chaos of Templars and mages, they could carve out a nice little slice of world for themselves. That was their idea of freedom. And then the Inquisition came along, disagreed with how they went about it, and cut their throats for it.”

Aran leaned his head back against the side of the desk, pressing the cool glass to his neck. He thought of Cole, kneeling beside the bandit leader, closing his eyes gently. ‘He might have changed,’ he’d said so quietly, so filled with sorrow. “We did,” the Inquisitor agreed, low. “You’re right. If I’d been smarter, more experienced, I could have found another way. Parlayed. Convinced them to surrender… and you’re going to say that the Qun does that, too.” He met Bull’s steady gaze, “But what comes after the war and the surrender?”

“Peace. Surety of purpose.”

“I seem to recall you saying that life wouldn’t suit me.”

“I also said I’d get a promotion if you converted.”

“Yeah. You did.” Aran set the glass aside, “Do you ever think about that promotion? About what would happen if the Qun took over the rest of Thedas?”

“Cassandra and Cullen and Rainier would fit right in, if they didn’t die fighting. Those three love rules. The mages, though… Vivienne’s too political, Dorian’s too arrogant, Dalish is too stubborn, and Solas is just… weird. Sera and Varric would mouth off until they wound up reeducated, same as they tried with you. Skinner, too. Grim and Rocky wouldn't make it past the invasion. Cole… they’d kill Cole, no question about that. Krem might swing it, or he might get himself killed; depends where the tamassrans put him and how that suited him. Stitches would find a place easy, provided he didn’t get himself killed trying to save the rest of the Chargers. You’d do okay, for a while anyway. The way you took to that assassin training... Tamassrans would spot that impulse towards obedience, which is why you’ve got that soursweet taste on your tongue. What they’d miss, what I see, is that you don’t last in that state long. Eventually, you’d get your shorts in a twist over the mages or the wars or one of your dozen other causes. They’d probably be forced to kill you; the re-education circuit would become too much or you’d try to start a revolution.” The Iron Bull sucked his teeth, “So, to answer your question: no, I don’t think about it much at all.”

Aran watched him curiously. “You don’t like things easy,” he murmured, “Do you?”

The qunari was quiet for a time, then, “I guess not.”

“All right.”

“I heard about what you told Rainier.”

“Did you?”

“Truth above everything. Good men following bad orders.” 

“And?”

“Somebody sold you out, huh? Someone other than my doppelgänger.”

“Yes.”

“And again, just now. That’s how you ended up in a sweat lodge, huh? Another betrayal by someone you trusted.”

Aran shook his head, “Not this time. You- No. Not you. Sorry. He. He didn’t trust him. Never did. Just… that The Iron Bull-“

“Your Valo-Kas.”

Aran glanced up, blinked once, “...yeah.”

“Go on.”

“He thought he had a line on the blighter. We all did. We knew he was a dick. We didn’t realize he was that much of a monster.”

“So this guy, Eamonn Cadash...”

Aran frowned.

“You were shouting about him.”

“Oh.”

“Cadash is a Carta clan, right?”

“Yes. There, he was the Inquisitor.”

The Iron Bull whistled low. “Carta in the big chair. Interesting choice.”

“Turns out getting the big chair’s not so much about personality and more about who’s got this.” Aran looked at his glowing palm. “Blind, stupid, crazy, bad luck.”

“You think so?”

“From what I’ve seen.”

“Everyone who gets that gets the power?”

Aran hesitated, “Well… no. But he did.”

“Huh. Power on the mainland is strange. Leaders come down through all kinds of random shit: who your dad was or who you pray to or what knick-knacks you’ve got. My people don’t choose leaders from who’s the strongest or the smartest, you know. They choose people to lead who are willing to make the hard decisions; that’s not always a person who makes the right decisions. You try to do both, at least.” He slapped his hands on his knees, standing up again. The tips of his horns brushed the ceiling as he leaned and stretched out his back. “So, next time you see this guy, if you do.” The Iron Bull held a hand down to help Aran up, “Stab him in the eyes, from me.”

Aran let himself be pulled to his feet, felt the air rush through his head. Dizzy, then steady. Bile in the back of his throat, burning, but it didn’t rise further. “I’ll do that.”

“Okay.” 

“You said your Valo-Kas told you to run.”

Aran tilted his head back to peer up at him. “He did.”

“If I tell you to run, Boss, you should do it.”

Aran held The Iron Bull’s gaze for a long beat before nodding slowly. “If that’s as good of a promise as I’m going to get, I’ll take it. For now.”

The qunari nodded, patting him on the shoulder, “Let's go find some of those tiny, salted fish the Orlesians brought with them. That’ll take the edge off.”

”The Iron Bull?”

”Yeah, Boss?”

”You stayed with me this whole time?”

”Sure. Like I said, I’ve been there.”

”Thank you.”

”Sure thing.” The Iron Bull quirked a brow as they headed down the hall towards the kitchens. “What’s up?”

”No, it’s ridiculous.”

”What is?”

”I just... Was I... dancing? With Dorian?” 

The qunari chuckled, “Oh yeah.” He winked, “You weren’t half bad.”

”And he let me? In front of people?”

”Yeah,” The Iron Bull patted him on the shoulder. “He seemed good with it.”

”Okay.” The Inquisitor scrubbed his hands over his face, “But there wasn’t a forest.”

”A forest of fops, maybe.”

“You’re sure.”

”Pretty sure.”

Aran shook his head. “It was called issrala? The smoke?”

”Yep.”

”Fuckin’ Voidshite.”

The Iron Bull laughed outright. “Yeah. That pretty much sums it up.”


	7. A vision of all worlds

I lost track of time, I’ll admit that. I hadn’t meant to. Between the webs of memory and history that Cole had provided and procured, and the pieces of Aran’s journals that Varric and I had managed to copy, I fell headlong into his travels. 

The trick was remaining objective. It didn’t matter what happened each place and time, I reminded myself again and again. What mattered was finding the pattern. _Why_ did he show up some places and not others? Why did he sometimes move forward and other times back? I sketched on a thick vellum map of known Thedas. At first, I marked arrivals and exits, but as the pattern became clearer, I merely noted exits and no longer marked them on the map. He was being pulled from place to place, time to time. The points of departure were diverse, random, but the arrivals… those were more specific. And redundant. Ostwick. Kirkwall. Denerim. Halamshiral. Minrathous. Griffon Wing Keep. The stone circle in the Fallow Mire. The Aeducan thaig on the Storm Coast. Haven. Skyhold. There were more points that seemed random, but when taken all as one, even those points were in places along the path between the main landing areas. The meaning behind those key areas, though... That, I couldn’t place. Not yet. Then, of course, there was the component of time, which altered the presentation yet again, turning it on its side. 

“Wake now,” Cole’s voice tugged me from a mathematical study comparing Veil density to arrival zones. “He is woken.”

“Hm?” I asked absently.

“He said I was awake.” Jarring, Aran’s jovial joke. Maker, too much time with only Cole’s commentary to keep me company. I turned to find our Inquisitor, his chin resting on the stone bannister, peering at us… inquisitively. “I should have guessed when I asked you to stay here that you’d turn my room into a laboratory. This is what I get for wandering off, eh?”

“You’re… lucid.”

“I am.”

“I just said that,” Cole folded like paper to the floor. 

“The effects of the poison are quite finished then? Have we any lingering aftershocks to look forward to?”

“Bull poured two buckets of water into me and fed me small, bony fish. He says I’ll be tired for a day or so, but nothing more. I feel much better.” He nodded to the destruction and detritus I’d created. “What are we up to?”

“Ah… plotting your history geographically, temporally, and metaphysically.”

“Sounds normal enough. ...The Iron Bull is concerned that he’s upset you.”

I blinked, “What? Oh. No.”

“So you’re alright?”

“Not at all. But it’s nothing to do with him.”

“Me, then,” he murmured, sorrow touching his expression. 

“I dislike that you keep disappearing. I dislike that you keep reappearing worse for wear. I am displeased by the entire predicament and my inability to correct it.” I waited for him to meet my eyes, “I’m glad that you are here and well.”

He nodded, looking away. “Alive.”

“Yes. Another terrible something happened, I take it.”

He swallowed uncomfortably. If his expression hadn’t been enough to tell me I’d stepped into a minefield, Cole’s sudden appearance at his side did the trick. Our spirit wound his arms around Aran, resting his cheek against his shoulder. Aran held him back, a faint sense of comfort flexing around his lips. “Yes. Another terrible something.” He closed his eyes. “I’ll write it down, shall I? I’d rather not relive it at the moment.”

“Yes, that’s…” I looked around at the papers. The thread. The maps. I had become as much a madman as I’d once thought him to be. “I’m sorry to have to ask you to.”

“No, you’re not,” he murmured.

I frowned. “No. I’m not. Perhaps I should say instead: I am sorry that it pains you.”

“I know.”

Awkward. I should have been with him. With both of him, or either. But this… these functions and equations and categories and details- _this_ was what I could do for him. This was the only way to stop him having to suffer through these things again and again. 

“I know,” he said again. “It’s alright. I’m just tired.”

“Understandably.” 

“Yes.” His eyes opened to slits, “I hear we put on a show?”

“Pardon?” I folded my hands behind my back, “Oh. Yes. Rumors confirmed, as it were.”

“I’m sorry.” He hung his head. His bangs brushed his eyes like snowflakes. His cheeks stained red as though wine had been spilt. 

_My poor Amatus,_ I thought. _What have I done to you?_ “I’m not.” I lifted my brows as he raised his gaze. “Rather exhilarating, I thought. We should do it again.”

“...we should?”

“If you are so inclined.”

“I…” he searched, searched, searched my face, as though he were expecting to discover long forgotten stanzas to an epic poem. “Really?”

“Time is a precious commodity. I would prefer not to waste any more than we must. And, as you pointed out rather elegantly,” I smiled: “Fuck them if they take issue.”

He laughed out loud in a short, sudden burst, snorting for good measure, and ending in: “Quite.”

“So.”

“So,” he repeated, still chuckling. It was good to hear him laugh. Not the wild, mad cackle, or the somber, hopeless exhales, but simple joy. 

_I will make it up to you, Amatus,_ I promised him silently as his smile went crooked and sly. _We will make it through this._

* * *

I learned quickly that, if left alone for any length of time, Aran would start to think of where he’d been and what he’d seen, and his eyes would take on a distant, heartbroken sheen. But we had ways of occupying him. 

Getting him into a bath, for instance, had been a simple matter. We’d changed the bath water three times to clear the layers of muck and ash from him while Cole sang sweet, strange songs from a stool. I warmed the copper tub and took my time combing and cutting his hair to my satisfaction; it had been a rat’s nest in parts, but I’d managed to shear the worst of it and pay homage to his rather shapely head. Between the water, Cole, and myself, Aran had dozed off, and prying him back out was another set of challenges entirely. Convincing him to don the soft black leather pants and boots had been easy enough, but the cape and plumed hat that came with them had been flatly refused, much to Vivienne’s chagrin. I thought I did rather well not getting in the middle of that particular exchange, but she blamed me anyway. Ah well. I had warned her. A compromise was met with a silk shirt, unbuttoned, and no hat, which suited him and made my Inquisitor more delectable than usual.

Then there was food and the never ending line of Ser Whosits and Lady Whatsits and music to occupy us through the dark day that followed. Leliana scooped Cole up for ‘educational eavesdropping’, leaving Aran to Josephine and myself. 

“It’s quite a coup for them, seeing you in person, Inquisitor,” Josephine was telling us happily as Aran concentrated on peeling a grape. “And as you might have guessed, after your dance at the soirée, I was besieged with questions about the two of you.”

“Were they surprised?” I inquired. “Because if you bring me ten silk scarves, I can show them a dance that would _really_ shock them.”

“No!” 

“What?!” Aran gaped at her, “Don’t say ‘no’ to that; give him the bloody scarves!”

She laughed, “Everyone has been thrilled, of course, your Worship, my lord. In fact, there has been a marked increase in propositions of alliance since.”

“An increase?” Aran snorted. “What, from nothing? Why?”

“Not nothing, my lord. We’ve received them from the beginning. You _are_ nobility, after all, and the leader of one of the most powerful institutions in Thedas. A house would be foolish not to at least attempt an allegiance. Marriage is where most such negotiations begin when a bachelor is one of the parties.”

“Why is this the first I’m hearing of it?”

“Were you in the market for a marriage of state?” I asked him, quirking a brow.

“No, of course not.” Aran concentrated on his grape, adding under his breath, “But it’s nice to know I was asked...”

“Shall I have the letters sent to your chambers, my lord?” Josephine asked, looking particularly pleased.

“No! Mother and Maker, no. I’ll take your word for it.” He glanced up, “Strange there should be an increase, though, isn’t it? Did… I don’t remember exactly what happened. Was it unclear that… ah, nevermind.”

“I believe,” I murmured, nursing my wine, “you may have opened a new quarter of perceived opportunity from the hopefuls.”

“There is that,” Josephine agreed. “I had set it about from the beginning that you were a confirmed bachelor, based on your time in the Chantry.” 

“The nefarious Southern Chantry,” I murmured, tongue in cheek, making him laugh.

“It was easier to turn down the requests without offending anyone,” she continued, “And now we’ve begun receiving interest in pursuing an alliance with you, as well, my lord Pavus.”

I smirked. “Perhaps we danced too well.”

“You both come from very old, very respected noble houses, and with evidence of your connection to one another, many of the other old, noble houses see an opportunity for… how should I put it? Two for the price of one?” 

“Oh, Mother of Mercy,” Aran covered his face with his hand. 

“It’s funny, don’t you think?” Josephine asked, overflowing of good humor. I was finding the Inquisitor’s consternation positively hilarious, to be sure. “Since you’re already related, I mean.”

“Wait, what?” Aran lifted his head, eyes wide.

“Your _face!_ The _horror_ ,” I chuckled. “We’re not first cousins or anything like that. Can you imagine?”

“You _knew_ about this?”

“Of course. You’re a Trevelyan, and somewhere in the dank nethers of my family tree was also a Trevelyan. Perhaps he was even the one who ventured to Ostwick to establish the branch. We are talking long ago. Long, _long_ ago.”

“You knew that off the top of your head?”

“Not the top. Maybe the lower middle or thereabouts. Bloodlines are serious business in Tevinter.”

“And Orlais. And Antiva,” Josephine added, nodding encouragingly.

“Oh yes? We were taught lessons and tested, by strict nannies.”

“We had several tutors for that subject alone,” she sat forward in her chair. “I never missed a question. Heraldry is a passion of mine,” she admitted with a blush of pride.

“Then we are even more blessed by your assistance than I’d previously thought,” I told her, eliciting a bright, pleased smile from her. I winked at Aran, “When I first heard your family mentioned, I had to go through all the old mnemonics…” Josephine snorted in disdain, which I agreeably let go. “But yes. There you are.”

“I am so, so glad I didn’t know this.” He looked longingly at my wine, “In fact, I wish that I didn’t.”

“Why? I think it’s lovely,” Josephine cooed.

“It makes flirting dashed awkward. Not to mention other things.”

“That depends on which branch of the family you come from,” I murmured and watched his eyes cross in alarm. “Regardless, I think we’re still good to go. By at least three ages.”

Aran sighed.

“Honestly, I’m surprised you _didn’t_ know,” I quirked a brow at him. “You’re the one with the famously prodigious memory.”

“I remember what I pay attention to. My family’s various noble intermarriages didn’t exactly pique my interest when I was younger. Or now, for that matter.” 

Josephine rested her folded hands on the table, “I’m still surprised I never saw you at Lady Trevelyan’s summer balls.”

“You wouldn’t have.” Aran finished his grape and offered the pit-marked result to me in his palm. It was warm from his fingers. I took it obligingly and refrained from commenting on its imperfections. “I remember you, though.”

“Really?” she asked.

“You pocketed madeleines to take home with you.” 

She blinked, blushing, “I never.”

“And you cleaned champagne off your shoe in the fish pond.” Aran grinned, “And you pushed Lord Fereday’s second oldest son into a thorny hedge. And-”

Josephine laughed shakily, shaking her head, “That’s enough. I believe you.”

“Great-aunt Lucille always did love a good party.”

”My lady,” a soft voice interrupted from behind us. “You asked to receive word when we heard from Messere Solas. He has declined your request, citing that he is occupied with other studies at present.”

”Oh,” Josephine frowned. “Very well. Ask that he let me know when his schedule opens for alternate projects.”

”Yes, my lady.”

”He’s been very difficult to get ahold of as of late,” she muttered to herself. 

”What did you need?”

”Oh, some remnants of elvhen artifacts were delivered from Antiva. I was hoping he might be able to shed some light on them for the scholars there, in return for... well. It can wait, I suppose.” She squeezed Aran’s hand quickly, “I should make the rounds again. Thank you for the distraction.”

”I’m a distraction?” Aran pouted.

”Always, my friend,” she smiled, rising and crossing around the table, “Speaking of which... I don’t suppose either of you would want to partake of your daily practices this afternoon? We could light the courtyard.”

”Our daily what?”

”Your staff work,” Aran winked at me.

”And the Iron Bull mentioned that your blade work is also rather impressive.”

Aran snorted, blushing, “Nothing alike.”

”My staff work?” I asked. “What? The warmups?”

”Yes,” they said as one, which gave me quite a pleasing jolt. 

”I will...” Because how could I refuse the eager request of someone wishing to admire me? “If you do.” Because how could I miss the opportunity to watch a martial feat that The Iron Bull called ‘impressive’, especially one such featuring my recently affirmed lover?

Aran sucked his cheek, hesitating, as Josephine clapped her hands, “It’s settled then. Lovely. I will arrange everything. A demonstration of our martial prowess. I will see which of the others I can gather. Perfect!”

Aran rested his chin on his fist, watching her go. “Do you think she had that in mind all along?”

”Who can say what our lovely ambassador has in her mind?” I kissed his cheek, “You’re a good sport.”

”I’m home. I’m alive. And, like you said, time... well. I should make the most of it. If it helps,” he shrugged. “Plus, I love watching people watch you.”

I touched his chin lightly, “Who wouldn’t? I’m wondrous to behold.”


	8. Nothing He has wrought shall be lost.

_I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the Fade  
_ _For there is no darkness, nor death either, in the Maker's Light  
_ _And nothing that He has wrought shall be lost._

-Trials 1:14

  
“I had thought you were exaggerating,” Josephine murmured breathlessly as the crowd around the courtyard stared in wonder. They were seated on a dais overlooking a hastily erected sparring circle where currently Dorian, Cullen, Cassandra, and the Iron Bull were moving through their daily exercises. Muscles rippled and flexed in the torchlight of the afternoon dark. Beads of sweat dripped sinuously, seeming to dance in tune with the strum of Maryden’s lute. The blade of Cullen’s greatsword gleamed as he sliced patterns through the air. Cassandra’s shoulders shook as she slammed her shield into a practice dummy with the force of a lunge. The Iron Bull winked at a woman in a silver mask as he beheaded another practice dummy with a single swing of his axe. Dorian was all virile dynamism, twisting his staff around himself as he moved in a steady pattern in his corner of the field. 

Aran patted her hand lightly. “I would never mislead you about something this important.”

“Of course not. No.” She smiled warmly, tilting her head toward his. “We have missed you, my lord,” she whispered. “I have.”

“And I, you.”

“...Will you not go and join them?”

Aran sighed, “Josie…”

“I know you’re tired. It was foolish of me to ask. Only it would be so good for our guests to see your prowess and Lord Pavus did ask that you participate as a requirement for his own… but never mind me. You’re absolutely right.”

Aran dragged his gaze from Dorian’s back to peer at her. Josephine was all conniving sweetness and dastardly decency. He sighed again and stood, plucking his belt of gear from the arm of the chair; he strapped it around his waist to the sound of growing murmurs. It was part of plan that he practice with them. Demonstrate. And yet he’d been hoping that he could get away with merely watching the show. He wasn’t tired; he was _exhausted_.

And he hated being watched so very, very much. 

Swallowing past a suddenly dry throat, he ambled down to the ring in what he hoped was a relaxed, unconcerned gait. He breathed. Tried to breathe. His heart was thrumming anxiously. He could feel every muscle slowly coiling on themselves like snakes. _Just draw your daggers. Just practice, as you usually do. Nothing different_. Slice. Thud. Whack. Whirl. He dabbed his lip with his tongue. Oh, to sit in peace and comfort and _observe…_ Above, the dark midday sky was awash with clouds. Snow danced through the air above, though no flakes graced the courtyard or the keep’s gardens. Lunge. Block. Swipe. Spin. Aran walked past, through, watching the movement of the flakes as they drifted off and away. It slowed his heart rate, let him breathe, calmed him… The darkness was beautiful, ever changing and infinite. Like the ground beneath his heels. The peak that the keep’s stones paid homage to. 

_We are the clouds_ , he thought. _We break apart, we weep, we resolve, we move on_. He opened his arms, holding his palms to the sky, and felt the energy flow around him. Skyhold was a child compared to the mountains, but she was ancient, too. Resilient. And she had power. He could feel it, taste it in his teeth, the energy that none of the mages could quite define. She was built before the Veil, he realized. She wasn’t enchanted or runed or bespelled. Skyhold _was_ magic. He could feel her hesitant heartbeat in his heels. He could feel her breath in every soft breeze brushing his palms, his fingertips. She was steady. She was strong. Ancient. Serene. Her stones did not care who maintained them. Her walls held for whoever was within. Her tunnels, endlessly churning down, down, down into the mountain. Her towers reaching, aching, towards the stars. 

She stood for those that needed her. As a shelter. As a guide. As a protector. She stood between harmony and violence. 

As he did. 

He could taste her power, like herbed salt on the tip of his tongue, buzzing. He could feel her growing cool and smooth around his ribs. Distantly, he heard the crack of the Anchor, but he couldn’t feel the pain through her serenity. 

She had stood for an eternity. She would stand for another. And so would they. So would they all. He knew it with a certainty. Perhaps he wouldn’t survive the battles to come, but the spirit that fueled their cause would live on. 

_Mythal_ , he wrote her name into the clouds with his eyes, _all-mother, protector of the People, watch over us, for the path we tread is perilous. Save us from the darkness and we will sing your name to the heavens._ [1] 

* * *

  
Later, the bards would tell of how on the second of the three annual days of darkness, on a peak high in the Frostback Mountains, Andraste’s Chosen called a blessing from the heavens. How the Inquisitor had stood as a beacon of power and light, surrounded by his fiercest allies, and every soul within a mile’s radius had been infused with hope and vigor. How his blessingmark had called a renewing air into the keep that made daypetals bloom in darkness and bare trees give fruit, and many a boy child born nine months or so later was given the name of ‘Aran’. How Andraste’s boon was accompanied by the long, low, keening howl of a wolf before the darkness wrapped around them all again, comforting and soft as fennec fur. 

Dorian listened to the answering cries of wolves in the distance, echoing across the range. He heard the soft crack of muted thunder as the Anchor flickered silent. 

“We sing Her name,” Aran whispered, his voice carrying to every ear, “and She answers in kind.” He was bathed in the last flickers of a verdant communion, but he was also silver as starlight and blue as cursed fog. 

Aran was aglow, and so was he. So were they all, in this circle in the center of Thedas’ finest. Dorian could feel power rippling over his skin, shortening his breath like cold, but it was hot. Secure. A barrier. A variety of barrier, anyway. It hadn’t been pulled through from the Veil, as Dorian’s were when he summoned protection. It was pure, unsullied, erupting fully formed without casting or care. 

Aran’s will? Or one of his various patrons’? The Anchor, definitely. Cassandra was studying the shell that swept over their heads, her Seeker’s gaze perhaps as penetrating as Dorian’s own. Cullen had shivered, throwing off the spell with a rough shake of his head… and it had gone. Fluid as water. 

_Compromising_ magic? It took immense skill to evoke a spell that could bend around individuals. Immense skill to carve a spell this pure out of the Fade without leaving hints of one’s resonance. 

Of course, it _wasn’t_ Aran’s spell. For all that he was and all that he had become, he was not a mage. Aran was... a conduit. Yes. A powerful conduit. A living, breathing, self-aware conduit. What was moving through him now? How much could he control? How much was he cognizant of? What did it _feel_ like? 

Aran turned, his expression blissfully serene… until their eyes met. Serenity sharpened, then warmed until the residue of magic on Dorian’s skin sizzled. They were connected, the two of them.

Without a word, the leader of the Inquisition turned and left the circle. Left the crowd. Strode with purpose towards the hall, through the crowd of people still shivering with the burst of power he’d shed. Dorian found the curve of Cole’s nose on the ramparts above, peering down at them. The three of them. Three corners, strong and equal, sharp as a cat’s claw. He gave a nod and the shadowed spirit flickered and disappeared. 

* * *

“Did you _see_ that?” Aran breathed, pointing towards the window as Dorian crested the stairs to his - _their_ \- chambers. His breath was rushed; his skin a pattern of goose pimples and freckles at war. “Did you _feel_ it?” He spun, scrubbing his hands together, bouncing on his toes. “That was- that was- _fantastic_ , wasn’t it?” He looked down at his palms. “I _protected_ you! All of you!” He speared Dorian with excited, fadeburned eyes, “That was _new_! That was amazing!”

“Yes, very,” Dorian held up a finger. “Quick question, _how_ did you do it?”

“The keep! The keep is alive!” Aran spun again, pressing his palms to the wall. “She’s protecting us. And I… keyed into her, I think, somehow? It was a rush! Like standing in a waterfall, all... tingly and _fervent_.” He grinned, looking back over his shoulder, laughing as Cole catapulted against him. “Hi.”

Cole pressed his face into Aran’s shoulder, arms wrapping tight. Aran glanced from him to Dorian with a questioning expression. “Did I miss something? It was good, wasn’t it? Was it not good for you?”

Dorian eyed his hands, which had been covered in paper cuts. The ache in his back was gone, too. The tension headache he’d had for weeks had melted in the thrumm of energy. Not just protected. Healed. “It was new.” He crossed to them, fighting the infectious exhilaration, the adrenaline from the power he’d absorbed. He couldn’t blame Aran; he felt like dancing as well. Desperately. Without clothes in the way. “Skyhold is… awake, you say?” He asked, maintaining a semblance of decency, “Cole?”

“No,” Cole whispered. “No.” Trembling. Heartbroken. Clasping to Aran like a barnacle.

And Dorian understood, quite suddenly. The rush of power. The howl he’d heard… not a howl. Keening. He stared at Aran, standing right in front of them, flushed with power and life and amazement. Dead. He was dead and gone. His storm had released, channeled somehow from certain destruction into one final gift to them all. 

“Dorian?”

Dorian shook his head, cupping Aran’s cheek in his hand. “It _is_ good,” he murmured. “It’s wondrous. _You_ are wondrous.”

“You’re both being weird.”

Cole rubbed his cheek against Aran’s shoulder. Dorian curled an arm around Cole, drawing Aran forward to kiss, to taste, to linger. Aran sighed against him, tasting of ozone, of power, of the Fade.

“Don’t go,” Cole whispered. 

“I won’t,” Aran looked between them. 

“You _will_!”

“Alright, yes, I will, but only until I’m back again.”

“I won’t _change_ ,” Cole insisted. “I won’t change and he won’t leave. He promised me.”

Aran blinked, startled, ratcheting down from his empowered effervescence to focus. “You have to change, Cole. Change is how we grow.”

“Not like that. Not like _that_.”

“Like what?” Aran frowned, “What’s happened? Why are you upset? It’s nothing to be frightened of, love; the keep is friendly.”

“It’s not the keep!” Cole hissed, “It’s not the _keep_! The keep is stone and wood! It’s dead. It’s all dead. Dead things piled on more dead things. So much dead, empty cold, on and on.”

Dorian cradled the back of Cole’s neck, feeling his tension, “Ocellus… he doesn’t know.”

“Doesn’t know what?” Aran asked nervously.

“We won’t leave, so you can’t either. There are _rules_. There are rules you can’t break and this is one of them.”

Aran hissed, cupping Cole’s face in his hands, his eyes softening with regret, “I’m so sorry. Whatever I’ve done to hurt you, I didn’t mean it. I wouldn’t- I can’t control it, love. Don’t you think I would if I could? Don’t you think I’d stay?” His lip trembled, brows drawn. “Cole?”

“I’m important to you,” Cole whispered. “That’s what you said.”

“You _are_.”

Dorian sighed, holding them both. What more could he do? They were his ghosts. His two generous, self-sacrificing, viscerally alive ghosts. “You are,” he echoed Aran. “To us both.”

“Tell him you won’t leave him.”

“I _didn’t_ -“ Dorian began.

“Tell him.”

Dorian huffed, “Very well. Here I am. Here I stay. Always, always. Never to stray. Are you happy?”

“Even if I’m different. Even if I go away. Even if I’m gone forever.”

“Yes, of course. But you won’t,” Dorian insisted.

“What is he talking about?” Aran stared at Dorian, concern etched into his brow as surely as the scars that cupped his face.

“Aran-“

“No,” he gasped, eyes widening. “No. Not now. Please, no, let me-“ he flickered like a candle gutturing, “please-“

There was a pulse in the air, in Aran’s flesh where he held him, and Dorian met his eyes.

There was a mad impulse that followed: Dorian tore the dagger from Aran’s sheath, grasping Aran’s hand around the blade with a sharp bite of pain and gush of heat.

Blood.

Power.

Pulse.

Sacrifice. 

  
Cole stood in the wake of their departure: the residual energy that remained stinging his skin. He was alone, framed in the window of the chamber, staring out over the mountains. But they were not. “Come home,” he whispered. “Come home soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Merrill’s prayer at the altar during The New Path.


End file.
